Beware! CrestFunds has stopped paying! Do not invest there!

Hello everybody! It’s been a slow enough day as regards news stories in the industry today, but I guess that’s almost to be expected being Sunday. And I hope you all remembered to put your clocks back an hour last night and enjoyed an extra hour in bed this morning. As it launches the official start of winter for most of us maybe it’s the best place to be on a Sunday morning anyway! Maybe it’s just as well I don’t have anything else to distract you with though, as just yesterday I received the following interview with the admin of CrestFunds that I had been waiting on. That’s a mostly longer term investment program that’s been running for about a month or so, offering terms of 1.4% for 30 business days, 1.6% for 60 business days, 1.8% for 90 business days, all with your principal back on expiry. The admin’s name is Gary, and he’s going to explain how CrestFunds works to you plus their main features below. If you like what he has to say and are interested in hearing a bit more on the program then I’ll just remind you first that you can read a more detailed description of CrestFunds in the original review published here.

“1. Hi Gary, please introduce yourself to the readers of MNO and tell us please about your own involvement in CrestFunds. What is your role in the day to day running of the program?

Hello Paul. First of all, I would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to be interviewed on MNO. Secondly, I’d like to greet all your readers.

My name is Gary Harrow and my job is to oversee the day to day operations of CrestFunds. That includes planning and organizing, public relations and marketing, financial administration and the development of new markets, in my opinion the key factors of business administration.

2. Can you give us some background information on CrestFunds? How many others are involved with the program or are you operating alone? How long have you been online?

CrestFunds was incorporated as an IBC in late 2010. The philosophy behind our venture is to pool and trade funds invested by small retail investors with a minimal amount of funds.

We are online since September 2013 and apart from me five other individuals are involved in CrestFunds.

3. Explain the investment plans in detail to us. What ROIs are on offer. What are the minimum and maximum amounts to invest?

As said before, our target group comprises of small retail investors. That are usually people who don’t want or can’t tie up capital in the long term. Thus we have created rather short terms.

We pay 1.4% for 30 business days, 1.6% for 60 business days and 1.8% for 90 business days. Obviously, all our plans return the principle at the end of the term.

The minimum amount to invest in our 1.4% for 30 business day plan is $10 only, while the maximum amount in our 1.8% for 90 business days is $10,000. The given figures are per investment only. Between them are various minimum and maximum amounts, depending on the chosen investment plan. For more information please refer to our website at CrestFunds.

4. What payment options are you currently accepting? What is the payment schedule, ie how long after making the payment request before the money is received by the member?

We are currently accepting SolidTrustPay, PerfectMoney, BitCoin, EgoPay, PexPay and OKPay.

Withdrawals are processed on business days only [Monday until Friday] between 8am and 4pm GMT. We process withdrawal requests multiple times daily and usually a request is received by the member within a few hours at max.

5. How secure is the website of CrestFunds? What are you doing to protect it and members’ accounts from hackers? Are you on a dedicated server? Who is your host? What kind of anti-DDoS protection do you have?

Security is the be-all and end-all for any website involved in e-commerce. One of our staff members is a professional sys admin with years of experience. His main task is to monitor our server security and performance.

We are hosted on a dedicated server at Phoenix NAP and Cloudflare is our anti DDoS provider. The main reason choosing Cloudflare over their competitors is, that in addition of protecting our website from DDoS attacks, their services include the optimization of the delivery of webpages. Visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance possible. Plus their references are impressive: Among their clients are companies and organizations like Eurovision Song Contest, World Economic Forum, Spamhaus and The Franklin Mint Group.

6. What kind of script is CrestFunds running off? Where did you get it, how safe is it, and why do you think this one is most beneficial for you as an admin and your members?

We went for the best available: Shadow Scripts. The reason is that it has proven for many years to be secure and reliable and it’s developer Chris is offering a superb and very timely support.

We even consider it as more secure than any custom written script, due to its track record. Any custom written script needs to go through months if not years of trial – before it can be considered that safe.

In addition, we consider it user as well as admin friendly, all tasks are properly organized.

7. Can we see any statistics regarding CrestFunds? How many members have joined since the beginning and how many are active at the moment? Are you pleased with the support from the members so far? How important a role do they play in bringing in new members?

Sure Paul! We have currently just around 600 active members and are very pleased with their support. The majority of our active members are referred by others, so their role is significant to say the least.

8. How can members contact you if they have any questions or support related issues?

The easiest way to contact us is through the support ticket system in the members area. Our support staff member is gladly attending all requests in a punctual manner during our business hours.

9. What have been the most common questions and problems you’ve had to deal with so far? Is there anything you wish to say here so that members can avoid having to contact you later?

99% of support requests received are related to issues properly explained in our FAQ, i.e. funding e-wallet first before investing or concerns that withdrawal requests are pending for more than 24 hours during the weekend.

We like to advise all our current and future members to please take the time and browse through our FAQ, before contacting our support department.

10. How have you been promoting CrestFunds so far? What advertising strategy have you been using? How are you getting new members to join?

We have bought some banners on a selected choice of investment portals, with mixed results, I have to admit. Until today the best marketing tool for us is the word-of-mouth advertising by a happy member. Also, in the coming weeks we are planning to add banners on a very few monitoring sites — those who did a great job in referring new members.

11. What exactly are you doing with investors money? How are you investing it and how are you generating the profits being made to members?

CrestFunds is hedging funds in frontier and less liquid emerging market economies. Frontier and emerging markets have been one of the hottest investment areas since the early 2000s, with new ways to invest popping up all the time.

12. And finally is there anything else you wish to say not covered in this interview? Also please feel free to comment on the review of your program published on MNO. If there was anything you felt was unfair, mistaken, or in any way in need of clarification then you are welcome to explain this in your own words here.

I’d just like to emphasize my satisfaction with the progress of CrestFunds. We’ve planned slow but steady growth, as this will ensure the longevity and sustainability of our project and this goal was achieved. Now we are looking forward to mark our brand presence in the online investment community and to serve our members for a long time to come. For all who are not with us yet, please visit our website – and remember, you can join us from as little as $10. Try us, we do our best and you won’t regret it!

Concerning your review all we have to say is that it was fair, neutral and unbiased and we thank you for your unparalleled services in the online investment arena.”

That’s all for today, guys. I just want to finish by saying thanks to Gary for taking the time and effort to answer the questions I sent him and wish the best of luck to him and all the CrestFunds investors in making a profitable experience for all those involved. I’ll see you all tomorrow with the first news update of the new business week tomorrow, however I do want to get an early warning about one potential scam out to you. SabroTechnology has for the moment been moved to Waiting Status on the MNO monitor because of overdue payments which don’t look as if they are going to be completed. I’ll have further details on that tomorrow and whether or not the program is going to be moved to Scam Status or returned to Paying, but for now it’s best to avoid SabroTechnology until further notice. Thanks for reading, everyone. Enjoy what’s left of the weekend and I’ll see you all again tomorrow.